Google Is Not God of the Web • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#91

Post by mhh__ » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

thoraway1010 wrote: post #15

mhh__ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did Google ever do for us?

mhh___ types this while using chrome (open source) on android (open source), after reading their email in gmail and searching for the latest cat dancing videos on youtube. The sad reality most of the folks who claim never to use google or google never makes something available - almost always hot air. I do remember hotmail and MSN and AOL which preceded gmail, gmail was really pretty great when it came out. I think m…

It's a monty python reference

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#92

Post by darkmx0z » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #37

skilled wrote: post #14

Google Search is in a horrendous state right now. Search results have been getting worse each year, with interesting information being buried 20 pages down. I really hope they have plans to improve this or find an approach that works as a middle ground for generic SEO content.

I don't know if it's a combination of overreliance on algorithmic rankings + seo or what, but if I search for something like "Panasonic GH5" (something I searched recently), I want to see the top two ranked items as the Panasonic product page, followed by the Wikipedia page. When I run that search on Google in Canada, there is a Panasonic link on the first page (third link), but it's for the US store listing, which h…

They are relying too much on AI and "collective wisdom". The results you get now are what Google thinks you want based on what others want, not on what you are actually searching for. What you typed is now treated as a mere clue, not as a search key.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#93

Post by gok » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

> 22.82 Mbps will reliably download very complex web pages nearly instantaneously.

The author may be unaware of how ridiculously huge web pages have gotten. I just loaded Wired.com, scrolled down and let it sit for a few seconds. It downloaded 96.2 MB, requiring over 33 seconds on one of those average connections. On a pay-as-you-go data plan, it would have cost about a dollar just to load that one page. The front page has about 500 words of content. It also covered 100% of the content with ads, twice.

This is unsustainable. Web developers have utterly squandered all efficiency gains of the last 30 years, and then covered their grossly inefficient work with impossibly annoying, privacy-invading advertising. Google should be applauded if they make these wasteful developers suffer monetarily until they shape up. They've already stolen untold amounts of time and energy from us all.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#94

Post by darkmx0z » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #75

skilled wrote: post #14

Google Search is in a horrendous state right now. Search results have been getting worse each year, with interesting information being buried 20 pages down. I really hope they have plans to improve this or find an approach that works as a middle ground for generic SEO content.

Google Search is in a horrendous state right now. Search results have been getting worse each year, with interesting information being buried 20 pages down. I ran into this over the weekend. I had a question about something I took a photo of in a small village, and I knew a priest I met there would have the answer. I went to Google to find the parish web site, and it's simply not in Google. Not at all. Lots of sorta-…

You are getting that because other people do not care about what you are searching for :( their AI is maximizing the chances of quickly finding what most people want, not what you want.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#95

Post by bosswipe » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

What's infuriating to me about these types of "signals" to the search rankings is that they have little to do with the content that I'm searching for. Google will hide results that I might find useful because the web master hasn't kept up with whatever Google decided was today's best practices. How about ranking based on the best source for what I'm looking for?

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#96

Post by Yhippa » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #16

kickscondor wrote: post #2

> There is a very reasonable argument for essential services like search engines and news websites to conform to/adopt standards like AMP, but for the rest of The Open Web, ingenuity and risktaking should be encouraged, not discouraged, for the true good of all Peoplekind. Hadn't really considered this - because minimalist page size is often such a given - but, for instance, many amateurs often don't know yet how to…

Actually, I'd be interested in an alternative web where ingenuity and risk-taking would be utterly forbidden. Just HTML, and a very basic subset at that. No Javascript at all, no CSS. So much of the web would be better and more universally usable without "modern" cruft.

I was thinking about this though not quite as severe. I would also love to see something like this in the end though. It sucks that as a mobile user I'm paying for analytics, unoptimized images, and poorly-written code when just simple markup and text would do. With the speed at modern networks run server-side processing shouldn't be as taboo.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#97

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #28

monadic2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true chrome would ship with ad block and they would accept cold hard cash for their services.

I tried this, I used it, no big adoption, product got killed. Largely people prefer the free perception of the internet and wouldn't pay the prices it would cost if direct payments were made. I believe its in the $x00s per year

They tried this, I used it, no big adoption, product got killed.

To which service do you refer?

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#98

Post by wmeredith » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

bosswipe wrote: post #95

What's infuriating to me about these types of "signals" to the search rankings is that they have little to do with the content that I'm searching for. Google will hide results that I might find useful because the web master hasn't kept up with whatever Google decided was today's best practices. How about ranking based on the best source for what I'm looking for?

So glad you were able to articulate what I've been feeling for years. Google promotes good websites which has little to do with good content. It's a (debatable) signal of website quality, which is only tangentially related to content quality.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#99

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

darkmx0z wrote: post #94

reaperducer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search is in a horrendous state right now. Search results have been getting worse each year, with interesting information being buried 20 pages down. I ran into this over the weekend. I had a question about something I took a photo of in a small village, and I knew a priest I met there would have the answer. I went to Google to find the parish web site, and it's simply not in Google. Not at all. Lots of sorta-…

You are getting that because other people do not care about what you are searching for :( their AI is maximizing the chances of quickly finding what most people want, not what you want.

Most people want offers to sell fictional criminal records and address records that don't match what I searched for? I don't think the AI understands what the word "most" means.

Re: Google Is Not God of the Web

#100

Post by giantrobot » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #41

Covzire wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, unless illegal.

It is a private platform, correct? Would you prefer no search or what we had before Google? What would search look like of they did nothing? What would the world look like over the last 20 years?

You can't really say "before Google" like they've been the same for twenty years. Google's search used to be really good. They would actually use what you typed in the search box to perform the search.

Then Google started adding more portal-like features and using NLP to perform searches on what they wished you had entered in the search field. They also started tailoring search results to your past search history and whatever profile they constructed about you.

Some people might want a natural language question answerer, others might want a search of only current events, but some definitely just want to search for content.

Google has catered to the former at the expense of the latter. They try to stuff all their different modes into a single text box and display them on a single results page. There's no segmentation to clearly different functional modes.

For me I'd love to see Google go back to actual web searches. Support Boolean operators and term quoting. Return me only search results without offering me shit they think I want to see.

I abandoned Google as my main search engine in favor of DuckDuckGo years ago. While not perfect they at least show me actual search results. If I want other modes of search like video or news I can click those tabs but they don't force that content on me.